In certain situations, difficulty is experienced in transferring a patient to and from a wheelchair. This applies for example in the case of transferring a patient to a bath, but one of the most difficult problems has been transferring a patient into a motor vehicle. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, the door space is relatively shallow, and the patient must be moved into a crouched position before transfer. Secondly, if a patient is moved from the seat of a wheelchair which for the time being remains at the same height onto the seat of the motor vehicle, the motor vehicle seat becomes depressed as the patient's weight is moved onto it, and this can result in a jolt which in some instances is quite painful.
Various attempts have been made to overcome the abovementioned problem, and included amongst those attempts have been devices which interengage with one another so that at least for the time being a track is coupled to the wheelchair by being hooked together therewith, but even these have not been fully accepted as being completely satisfactory.